From Ideal Polyhedra to Fundamental Domains in H3

Rainie Heck

Oberlin College

January 2019

3 Rainie Heck (Oberlin College) From Ideal Polyhedra to Fundamental Domains in H January 2019 1 / 13 Overview

Research Goal: to connect the geometric and topological properties of hyperbolic with the algebraic properties of their associated Kleinian groups Background on fundamental domains with a familiar example Important result about number of edge classes for a given abstract Consequences of the theorem: Classify all fundamental domains on the cube with torsion free groups Results for more general fundamental domains

3 Rainie Heck (Oberlin College) From Ideal Polyhedra to Fundamental Domains in H January 2019 2 / 13 A Familiar Example

Definition (Hyperbolic Fundamental Domain) A region that disjointly tiles under the action of a Kleinian group (i.e. a discrete subgroup of isometries of PSL(2, C)).

Recall the torus and its fundamental domain in R2:

Key: Tiling induces a set of identifications between the edges and also vertices of the domain

3 Rainie Heck (Oberlin College) From Ideal Polyhedra to Fundamental Domains in H January 2019 3 / 13 Hyperbolic Fundamental Domains

Generalize from torus example: Tiling induces pairings, edge classes, and identifications Impose the following conditions Associated groups are torsion-free Fundamental domains are ideal and polyhedral Result: Obtain smooth manifolds All edges in a class have interior dihedral angles summing to 2π Can invoke useful results due to Rivin

3 Rainie Heck (Oberlin College) From Ideal Polyhedra to Fundamental Domains in H January 2019 4 / 13 Key equations relating exterior dihedral angles

Rivin gave a characterization of when a given abstract polyhedron with prescribed exterior dihedral angles can be realized as a convex ideal polyhedron in H3 Sum of exterior dihedral angles for all edges incident to a given vertex is 2π Torsion-free condition =⇒ angle sum of interior dihedral angles in an edge class of a fundamental domain is 2π

3 Rainie Heck (Oberlin College) From Ideal Polyhedra to Fundamental Domains in H January 2019 5 / 13 My Key Theorem

Theorem (H.) E − V A polyhedron with E edges and V vertices must have E = 2 edge classes.

Polyhedron Vertices Edges Edge Classes in FD 4 6 1 Cube 8 12 2 6 12 3 Dodecahedron 20 30 5 12 30 9

Combining Theorem with the Euler characteristic equations for the abstract polyhedron and quotient : The number of vertex classes in the fundamental domain is equal to the Euler characteristic of the quotient space

3 Rainie Heck (Oberlin College) From Ideal Polyhedra to Fundamental Domains in H January 2019 6 / 13 Classifying Fundamental Domains on the Cube

From theorem: must have 2 edge classes Show that edge classes must be broken down 5-7 or 6-6 to satisfy torsion-free and convexity conditions

3 Rainie Heck (Oberlin College) From Ideal Polyhedra to Fundamental Domains in H January 2019 7 / 13 Extending to more general polyhedra

Classification of FDs on the cube was made significantly easier by knowing edge classes have at least 5 edges

Under what conditions do there need to be > 3 edges per class?

How does the structure of the associated group affect the size of edge classes?

3 Rainie Heck (Oberlin College) From Ideal Polyhedra to Fundamental Domains in H January 2019 8 / 13 Background on Structure of Kleinian Groups

Tiling of H3 induces face pairings and edge class partitions Group elements that pair faces are generators of the group Sequences of generators that traverse each edge class are relators of the group Below is an example of such a group:

3 Rainie Heck (Oberlin College) From Ideal Polyhedra to Fundamental Domains in H January 2019 9 / 13 Results for General Polyhedra

Proposition (H.) If no pair of generators in the group corresponding to the fundamental domain commute with each other, then the fundamental domain does not have an edge class of size 3.

Corollary (H.) If the group corresponding to a fundamental domain does not have any generators that commute, then E ≤ 2V , where E, V are the number of edges and vertices, resp., in the abstract polyhedron.

Note that the icosahedron violates the inequality in the corollary and therefore a FD on the icosahedron must have commuting generators!

3 Rainie Heck (Oberlin College) From Ideal Polyhedra to Fundamental Domains in H January 2019 10 / 13 Possible Next Steps and Conclusions

Some ideas for moving forward: A similar characterization for the octahedron Considering groups with non-trivial elements of finite order by introducing the additional equation

2π x = , k ∈ , i k Z

where xi is the exterior along a certain edge

3 Rainie Heck (Oberlin College) From Ideal Polyhedra to Fundamental Domains in H January 2019 11 / 13 Conclusions and Acknowledgements

Main Take-aways: Algebraic properties of the associated group yield information about the topology and geometry of the associated polyhedron These results help determine when a given polyhedron with prescribed dihedral angles can be a fundamental domain

Thank you to my summer advisor Franco Vargas Pallete and for the NSF funding to spend the summer at UC Berkeley. Also a big thanks to all of the friends I made at my REU for their support and collaboration throughout the summer! Also thanks to NCUWM for hosting me and Oberlin College for funding me to be here :)

3 Rainie Heck (Oberlin College) From Ideal Polyhedra to Fundamental Domains in H January 2019 12 / 13 Bibiliography

Rivin, I. (1996). A characterization of ideal polyhedra in hyperbolic 3-space. Annals of Mathematics, 143, 51-70.

Heck, Laurel. From Convex Ideal Polyhedra to Fundamental Domains in H3. Submitted for publication to Minnesota Journal for Undergraduate Mathematics.

Image: https://mathoverflow.net/questions/219052/area-of-square-to- wrap-a-torus

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